Winter Solstice (St. Paul, MN, 2016)
Clair Dunlap
i-94 bleached white with winter salt
looks so dry it could be a cow’s skull – something i could hold up
and see, through some smooth windblown eye socket, the hot blue sky.
if i’m anything it’s a hungry mouth, looking for where the turquoise & the salt
are the same thing – deception pass, some far flung rock below us
the churn of the ocean at the ferry’s hips
a tide pool holding the secret crown of moon snail eggs
home.
if i'm anything, it’s trying to leave here:
the chapped lips, the angry red throats of my pores,
the bone-white roads, some sad desert of ice.
Clair Dunlap grew up just outside Seattle, WA, and now lives, writes, and teaches preschool in Minneapolis. She is the author of In the Plum Dark Belly, released by Beard Poetry in October 2016. She wants to be a librarian & read books with your kids. Her work can be found in The Harpoon Review, Souvenir, The Fem and more. She is a social media editor for Vagabond City, where you can catch her writing instagram posts.